This invention relates to a method and apparatus for use in the treatment of stuttering and more particularly to a method of detecting and indicating speech onset errors in stutterers who are participating in a program of therapy that reconstructs the form of the detailed gestures from which speech originates.
Children and adults who stutter have substantial difficulty in overcoming the handicap because of limitations in detecting certain aberrant characteristics of their own speech. Normally, the therapist must try to explain the various detailed characteristics of correct and incorrect sounds. Because in the reconstruction of speech the stutterer must modify minute aspects of speech behavior, it is difficult to cause the subject to attend to the details of his speech in a correct and efficient manner.
While the reasons for stuttering are not clearly known, it has been demonstrated that the handicap may be reduced or eliminated by the systematic reconstruction of the stutterer's speech behaviors. However, certain difficulties exist in causing stutterers to attend adequately to the detailed characteristics of their own speech. Specifically, within each syllable the amplitude rise time of the voiced component must fall beneath a certain value if stuttering is to be avoided. Therefore, it may be seen that it is difficult for the therapist to either make rapid, reliable judgments about the subject's behavior or to provide adequate feedback to the subject about the adequacy of his speech responses.
There is thus a need for a system by which the subject is made aware of the correctness or incorrectness of his speech responses in a direct, reliable manner. It will be appreciated that the therapist may not be able to react sufficiently quickly to indicate to the subject the onset of a speech error in time for the subject to recognize just exactly what he has done wrong. Moreover, it is both tedious and time consuming for a human being to be constantly present and attentive to one subject, and the instruction of a number of subjects simultaneously is virtually impossible.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a novel method and apparatus for the therapy of stutterers.
It is another object of this invention to provide a novel method and apparatus by which a subject in therapy may be given immediate feedback about the adequacy of his responses.
It is still another object of this invention to provide a novel method and apparatus for use in the treatment of stuttering in which a subject may be given an indication of correct or incorrect response during the initial formation of each syllable which the subject is to pronounce.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a novel method and apparatus for use in the treatment of stuttering in which the amplitude of the response of a subject in the pronunciation of a syllable relative to a reference amplitude is utilized as an indication of correctness.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a novel method and apparatus for use in the treatment of stuttering in which the growth rate of the response of a subject in the pronunciation of a syllable relative to a reference value is utilized as an indication of correctness.
These and many other objects and advantages of the present invention will be readily apparent to one skilled in the art to which the invention pertains from the claims and from a perusal of the following detailed description when read in conjunction with the appended drawings.